ME & MY PD QUESTION FOR DAN O’DAY: The skills I acquired while volunteering at a non-profit community station landed me a paying job on the afternoon drive (2-6pm) at a small market station. When hired the PD told me I had free reign over the show's contents, format and music. Since this is my first job at a station with an actual PD, I am somewhat unaware of his duties. Since I began my PD has stripped me of support staff for phones etc., my co-host and cut traffic reports from the show. He's inserted new features in the time slots of already established features making the features back to back. This makes for 7 and 8 minute stretches of talk on an FM music station, which I always understood to be "wrong". I feel his actions negate my role as producer and disrupt my performance. He informs me of the new changes while I am already on air doing the show. In addition, my ideas for on air bits and new features are always stomped on. The production i.e., promos and show ID's, I was promised two years ago are still not done. Recently my PD decided the afternoon drive need only be three hours long. The first hour (2-3pm) was changed to an extension of the previous show (which has a completely different music format) The previous DJ refused to work the extra hour so I automatically became the host of the second hour. Programming wise, it seems ridiculous to have a two hour show with two different hosts. Not to mention our names are similar and many listeners don't know the difference between us. As a result I am working with three different music formats in four hours! DAN REPLIES: And your question is....? I find it astonishing that even in a very small market, the program director of a commercial radio station would tell a newly hired employee that she has "free reign over the show's contents, format and music." Either you didn't quite understand the ground rules of the job, or your PD is completely incompetent. Obviously, informing you of changes while you're actually in the middle of your show is stupid and unprofessional. If promises made two years ago still have not been kept, then you can't trust your PD. What you describe sounds like a block-formatted station, which is virtually extinct in commercial radio. I'm tempted to chalk all of this up to an incompetent PD, but because you didn't tell me where you work I don't have enough information to make a more definitive judgment. And because you chose not to tell me your name or where you work (as I asked in my private e-mail reply to you), I'm replying to your "question" (I still can't find one here) only at my web site. While I keep all such information 100% confidential, I choose not to offer my time & energy answering questions for anonymous strangers.